Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, 2d ed - Review

HR Magazine, April, 1999 by Stephen S. McIntosh

The Ugly American was part of my assigned reading list in high school, and its message left me with a lasting impression. In the years since, I've worried about what U.S. authors were doing to employees around the world as they persuaded unsuspecting managers to force fit Western workforce practices onto diverse cultures.

Riding the Waves of Culture is a much-needed and well-designed departure from its genre predecessors. It is, in fact, an improved second edition of an earlier, solidly written work by the authors, Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner. In this new piece, they convincingly show that there is no universal way to manage and organize for the highest worker performance and employee morale. In the process they provide a viable and valuable business context for understanding both one's own culture and the key differences in the cultures of others.

Several things distinguish Riding the Waves of Culture. First is its impressive and carefully constructed database. Where most "comparative" studies of cultural differences lack adequate scope or remain locked in the domain of academic research papers, Riding draws on data from 30,000 participants with statistically representative samples from more than 30 countries. While the authors concede that the findings are broad interpretations and that contradictory examples can probably be found for each conclusion, the sheer size of the database contributes undeniable credibility to their logic.

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner divorce themselves from the typical pitfalls associated with transferring knowledge via potentially complicated or confusing interpretations of data. Rather than drown the audience in statistics, the authors use a seven-element model to make sense of the numbers, and they do it in a very readable manner. The model, which they use as a point of reference throughout the book, investigates cultures from these perspectives: rules, the individual, emotion, involvement, status, the approach to time and attitude toward the external environment.

In many respects, it is their layman's explanation of the model's cultural dimensions that makes Riding so worthwhile. The authors make a refreshingly surprising admission for social scientists when they note that no matter how exacting they try to be, identifying and defining group behaviors is not really scientific. They capably lead the reader to the conclusion that the polar ends of a behavioral spectrum are more important for their ability to translate abstract concepts than for their ability to predict absolute behaviors.

The various pieces of the model are nicely integrated, and the theories give practical meaning through an intermittent continuing story line in which a U.S.-based company with international affiliates attempts to install a global pay-for-performance plan. At each juncture, the U.S. HR manager is baffled by his colleagues' unexpected responses, which range from outrage to astonishment. It's a very believable scenario that nor only illuminates each factor being examined but adds an element of humor as well.

Once the foundation is laid, Riding applies its concepts to an analysis of the differences in organizational cultures and the potential effectiveness of these concepts in the process of corporate globalization. Even though it seems the discussion revolves around the issues of centralization-decentralization, the actual result is a methodology that affords managers the advantages of strategic control while maintaining local autonomy.

Interestingly, the authors then place their culture map over South Africa, which in their words is "one of the most pluralist societies in the world." This exercise offers a useful look at how a culture assessment can predict, avoid or eliminate problems rooted in race, language, locale, religion and national origin.

The book's final chapter on culture and diversity is far more than the obligatory addendum apparent in the work of most authors today. You may remember that Dr. Trompenaars conducted a culture survey and presented the related conclusions at the 1995 SHRM Annual Conference. He helps his reading audience learn to use that data to predict workforce perceptions, opinions and reactions to an organization's culture, strategies and change processes. The lessons are poignant without being pointed.

From beginning to end, the style, content and lessons of Riding the Waves of Culture make it a "must read" for line managers and HR professionals facing the dilemma of reconciling global and local policy making and practice.

Stephen S. McIntosh, Ph.D., is the president of Tartan Consulting, a Fort Myers Beach, Fla.-based firm focusing on creative business and HR strategies.

Riding the Waves of Culture is available through the SHRMStore at (800) 444-5006, option 1, $27.95 for SHRM members, $34.95 list price. Please ask for item number 48.12530 and use order code M049B.